Johnson 2004 - CDLI - UCLA

all identical in syntax), XP 1 refers to the syntactic phrase that immediately precedes the
*bi-√ prefix verb, and XP 2 refers to the phrase that immediately precedes XP 1,
schematically: *XP 2 XP 1 bi-√. It should be emphasized that this is not an attempt to
delineate the overall correlations between particular *bi-√ prefix verbs and any co-
occurring syntactic phrase, but rather an attempt to locate any patterns involving locality
with respect to the *bi-√ prefix itself. Where there is apparent alternation between the
category of the preceding XP with respect to a particular verb and the alternation is
between a postpositional phrase and a bare DP that ends in a vowel, all other things being
equal, I have assumed that the bare DP is in fact a postpositional phrase of the
corresponding type.
Period XP 2 XP 1 Lexemes Types/tokens
ED IIIb PP Loc/Erg DP Bare i 3-√ak, gin 2-√bar, ki-gar-√du 11, nu-
banda 3-√gar, giß-√ra, na-√ri/ru 2, a-
√ru, al-√du 3, si-√sa 2, giß/GIN 2.ÍE 3-
√se 3, igi-√sag 5, za 3-√ßu 4, giß-√tag,
38
za 3-√us 2
ED IIIb XP zero/DP/Erg/Loc DP Loc za 3-√ak, √du 8, √gar, ßu-√gi 4, √gu 7,
√mu 7, √du 3
Several important observations can be made about the overall distribution of *bi-√
prefixes in the different corpora: there is clear opposition in the ED IIIb materials
14/143
7/126